Unreal Tournament pre-alpha available to download now

You can now download a pre-alpha version of Epic’s free Unreal Tournament refresh, though it’s not quite official.

Earlier in the year, Epic Games announced that it was working on a new version of the classic online multiplayer shooter that kicked it all off for the developer, Unreal Tournament.

A small team of Unreal Tournament veterans, made up of UT developers, fans, and Unreal Engine 4 developers, has been working on the open source project. The result will be a completely free to play version of the seminal shooter for PC, Mac, and Linux.

Because of the aforementioned open source nature of this project, it’s now possible to play an early pre-alpha version of the game. You see, anyone with an Unreal Engine subscription can access the current build, and such ones can compile a working, downloadable version of the game.

That’s exactly what’s happened. Head on over to the ut.rushbase website and you can download a working version of Unreal Tournament.

It should be restated that this is an extremely early version of the game – “So early it’s technically not even pre alpha, it’s debug code,” according to the associated Readme file.

Still, if you can’t wait to whip out your Flak Cannon and party like it’s 1999, give it a whirl at your own risk.

Along with Quake 3, Unreal Tournament was responsible for setting the template for and popularising online competitive first person shooters. Its legacy can be seen in the likes of the Call of Duty series and Titanfall today.